Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston is asking lawyers, judges and others in the legal profession to fight Death With Dignity, a ballot question that would legalize physician-assisted suicide in Massachusetts, according to this Associated Press story.

The ballot question is being proposed for consideration in 2012 in both Massachusetts and Vermont by groups working to make lethal drugs available to terminally ill people, as an end-of-life care option. Read more about the movement here.

But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says that physician-assisted suicide really does not “enhance choices or freedom for people with serious health conditions,” and lists the reasons in its statement released in June, “To Live Each Day With Dignity.”

The Benedictine Monks of Assumption Abbey, Richardton, North Dakota, are reluctantly giving up a century-old tradition.

The monks started the monastery in 1899 and they have had a farm right from the beginning. It was a way of raising our own food. In the early days, everybody had beef cattle and dairy cattle, but now, in recent years, we are selling most of the cows. We still butcher our own, but we don't butcher very many, so it's the source of income for the abbey.

A source of income that's about to disappear as the monks prepare to sell their herd at auction, probably around Thanksgiving. Abbott Brian Wangler, who's in charge here, says it's strictly because there just aren't enough monk cowboys to manage the herd. Most monks here are older than 40 and fewer young men are entering religious orders these days.

The Post yesterday printed a revealing profile of freelance writer Jason Berry, whose reporting in the 1980s provided the first deep look at what would become the international clergy sex abuse scandal. Still a believer, still going to church and still reporting on the church's dark secrets, Berry explains to the interviewer why he stays. It was on Berry's initial reporting that NCR based its earliest coverage of the sex abuse scandal. The first story appeared in June, 1985. His latest book, Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church, examines how money flows through church structures with little accountability for how it's collected and how it's used.

At last, the Obama of 2008 has returned! On Monday, he gave a rousing speech in which he presented a plan for long-term deficit reduction.

As part of that, he advocated higher taxes on the wealthy, and he said he would veto measures that essentially charged the deficit to lower- and middle-income people and did not raise taxes on millionaires, or get rid of some of the most egregious loopholes.

The Republicans immediately cried, "class warfare!"

This is a phrase that has peppered American political speech for several decades now. But, I wonder, whenever I hear it, who is supposedly waging "class warfare" on whom?

The Rev. Harry Lewis was born the year Chevrolet started competing with the Ford Model T. He served in the military at the Battle of the Bulge, became a priest the year “All About Eve” won the best picture Oscar and retired from priesthood as Ronald Reagan’s presidency wound down.

On Monday, as he waited for the start of a special Mass marking his 100th birthday – apparently the first Diocese of Scranton priest ever to reach that watershed – the wry, endlessly upbeat Lewis answered the inevitable question about his secret to longevity with a tease.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to deny clemency to Troy Davis, who has attracted high-profile support for his claim that he was wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in 1989. Despite significant doubts about his guilt (as NCR blogger Claire Schaeffer-Duffy noted here), Davis' execution is scheduled for 7 p.m. EDT tomorrow.